The Edit Gallery Modal
Reorder, remove, categorise and caption everything in a gallery — from one screen.
Once a gallery has media in it, Edit Gallery on the block toolbar opens a full-screen workspace for the gallery's contents. Everything about which items are in the gallery, in what order, and what text they carry lives here. The inspector on the right of the editor handles how they look; this modal handles what they are.
Reordering
Drag any tile to a new position. A hint bar at the top says so, and each tile also carries Move left / Move right buttons — which are how you reorder from the keyboard, and the only way to move a video tile that has no featured image.
Reverse Order flips the whole list in one press. Handy when you've uploaded a set newest-first and want it oldest-first.
Order matters more on some layouts
Metro decides which images get featured slots from their position, and Grid reads strictly left-to-right. On Masonry, order is a suggestion — items fill the shortest column.
If the gallery's Order is set to Random, the order you arrange here is what the editor shows and what the shuffle starts from, but visitors see it shuffled.
Adding and removing
- Add from Media reopens the media picker with every source available. New items are appended to the end.
- Remove from gallery takes an item out of this gallery. It does not delete the file — the attachment stays in your Media Library.
- Select several tiles and use the Selection actions bar to remove them together.
"Delete permanently" is a different button
In the media picker's details panel, Delete permanently removes the attachment from your Media Library, everywhere on the site. Remove from gallery, in this modal, only removes it from this gallery. Read the label before you click.
Per-item text
Select a tile and the right-hand Attachment Details panel opens with five editable fields:
| Field | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Alt Text | What a screen reader announces, and what shows if the image fails to load. Leave it empty only if the image is purely decorative. |
| Title | Can become the tile's title, and is matched by image search. |
| Caption | Can become the tile's title or description, and is the lightbox caption. |
| Description | Can become the tile's description, and shows in the lightbox. |
| Custom URL | Where the tile links when Click Action is URL. See Image Custom URL. |
The panel also shows the file's dimensions and its URL with a Copy URL to clipboard button.
These edits are scoped to this gallery
Changing a caption here changes it in this gallery only — the attachment in your Media Library isn't touched. The same photo can carry one caption in your portfolio and a different one in a client gallery.
Clearing a field is not the same as overriding it with nothing. An empty field falls back to the attachment's own value, so you can undo an override by emptying it.
Categories
The left sidebar is the gallery's own category list. Creating categories here is what makes the filter bar possible.
- Add Category creates one. Name it something a visitor would recognise — these labels appear on the front end.
- Click a category to enter assignment mode: the modal says "Selecting images for <category> — tap images to add or remove", and every tap toggles that image's membership.
- Unassigned lists images that aren't in any category yet, so you can see at a glance what's left.
- Select several tiles first and use Bulk actions → Add to category to assign them together.
- Delete on a category removes the label. The images stay in the gallery — they just lose that category.
Selecting several at once
Tick the checkbox on a tile (or tap tiles in assignment mode) to build a selection. The Selection actions bar then offers bulk removal and bulk category assignment. Clear drops the selection.
Saving
Changes apply to the block as you make them, so closing the modal doesn't lose anything. But the page or gallery still needs saving — Update or Publish in the editor is what persists it.
Cancel Gallery discards the modal's changes and closes it.
Where to go next
- Adding media — the sources and what each supports
- Categories — organising a gallery
- Titles & Descriptions — turning that text into on-tile content
- The gallery block reference